Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday February 07, 2011 @04:11PM
from the surveilling-puppies-and-sunshine dept.

eldavojohn writes "Coinciding with the 32nd anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Iran opened a center to receive satellite images built 'entirely by Iranian engineers.' Iran promised that by the end of their year (March of 2011) they would launch two observational satellites: Fajr (Dawn) and Rasad-1 (Observation-1). You might recall two years ago when they launched Omid, which completed about 700 orbits in two weeks. There are reports that new launch rockets will be revealed in February to launch the new satellites — all equipment is claimed to be entirely Iranian made. Iranian media is reporting that one of the satellites 'carries remote measuring equipment that would be used in meteorology and identifying sea borders.' The Iranian Student News Agency says Explorer 4 (Kavoshgar 4) is meant to transport humans and other living organisms into space, and that the sensory on the satellites 'is able to find gas and oil resources, identify coal mines, jungles and agricultural products as well as salty-marsh and contaminated environments.' These rapid fire achievements are not the only bragging Iran has done as of late; they also claim 'new gamma radiation units for medical treatments and a supercomputer billed as among the top 500 most powerful in the world. But, fact or fiction aside, the satellites have old enemies speculating."

Just who do you think designs and supervises the construction of buildings?

Usually, a Structural Engineer of Record who stamps, signs, and vouches for the building. The SER is then liable for problems with the building for up to six years after their death. Special insurance is available for those claims.

SER certification requires formal training (e.g. B.Eng.) specialized post-graduate training, experience, and registration explicitly as a SER with multiple peer reviews. They often specialize in areas such as a building envelopes.

I believe that recent military and defense transactions with "their most crazy neighbor to the south" has little to do with logic and more to do with lucrative arms deals [washingtonpost.com] that have recently been put on hold (I daresay in the interest of regional stability).

To answer your question in a historical context I might point you to the horrible things that Russia and the United States did during the Cold War that essentially provided puppet theaters for their ideologies to be fought out. Why risk your citizens when you can show the world who's right with war and poverty in weaker nations? Wikipedia does a decent job of summing this up [wikipedia.org] but you might look up the 1953 Iranian coup d'état followed by the 1979 Iranian revolution and surmise why it would be in Russia's best interest to keep this thorn festering in the United States' side right up until today. The Soviet War in Afghanistan, the Eastern Bloc and many other actions were basically a cowardly way of Russia and the United States putting external countries in chaos to prove who was the better country in our petty capitalism versus socialism spat (and after all that everybody's implementing a little bit of both).

Similar to the redrawing of national/political boundaries by the Allies following World War II, we (and I mean the world, US/Russian citizens, the citizens of those countries, everybody) will for a very long time feel the pain and suffering of putting such pressures on weaker nations during the Cold War.

When you say "it's most crazy neighbor to the south," it might benefit you to consider the pressures that added to that craziness. While the blame lies entirely on no one, everybody participated. For a somewhat more even handed introduction to Iran's problems, check out the intro to Persepolis (the movie or the manga).

You know who's really lost a lot in all of this? The Iranian citizens.

And, when you're talking about countries and how they interact, you're talking about the Government of that country.

If that's the case, the USA has been crazy for over 50 years.

I mean, I know/. is an american site and has an unashamedly american bias, but this shit is just ridiculous. Iran is less of a threat to the world than the USA is. The USA has shown time and time again that they are prepared to start wars, meddle in other countries internal affairs, kidnap civilians, ignore international law or forc

Whatever. I'm not an American, and I'm not about to defend any of what you're bitching about. In fact, I agree with a lot of what you say.

I have seen speeches with Ahmadinejad and the simultaneous translation (I believe it was actually Al Jazeera) -- I'm still of the opinion he's bat-shit crazy. I can only hear someone talking about wiping the Great Satan off the planet so much before I'm forced to come to that conclusion.

I also saw the footage of what was happening to their protesters not so long ago.

The Russians believe their strategy "worked" in Chechnya -- bomb the cities to the stone age, kill anyone who doesn't cooperate, and arm a local force whose existence depends on you and their willingness to do whatever it takes to suppress dissent.

My sense is they think they could probably crush any kind of Iranian aggression just as easily.

Russia has a problem with radical Sunni (Salafi / Wahhabi) insurgency. Iran is not a threat there, because those folks hate Iran (which is Shiite) just as much if not more. Aside from that, there isn't anything for two countries to fight over, and they can back each other (and China) in UN versus US and its Western allies.

Why? When was the last time radical christians organized a global attempt to indiscriminately kill people on a massive scale? The Crusades?
There are simply more dangerous things in the world at the moment.

IIRC couple months ago, an american christian preacher went to Uganda and preached about the righteousness of killing homosexuals, dozens have been hanged and stoned and laws have been drafted with the death penalty for homosexuality in response.

An american christian preacher got the ugandan govt to change laws by preaching? Citation needed.
And even if true, that is a far cry from any group that goes about training in the use of munitions intended for civilian targets.

Basic scenario is that the American christian preacher came to Uganda, preached hate and death.Then a tabloid published a list of names and addresses of gays.Many of them were killed.Laws were drafted with the death penalty for gays.?That should be enough info for you to google it yourself.

People who pray every night that the world and all humanity be annihilated in a cleansing fire, so that they may finally dominate the world with a global christian theocracy lead directly by their god made manifest.

Cite for the cleansing fire claim? I don't deny that evangelical Protestantism drives a great deal of American politics, but your assertion doesn't at all square with the beliefs of the denominations widely represented in government.

In the last 20 years there have been significantly more successful attacks on US soil by Christian extremists (primarily in the form of attacks on abortion clinics) then their have been by Islamic extremists.

What's the body count? Last I checked, the Islamist extremists killed over two orders of magnitude more people than the anti-abortion people. The second biggest known terrorist attack (the Oklahoma City bombing) was anti-government not Christian. EgyptAir 990 [wikipedia.org] might qualify as a terrorist attack. After that, you're into nuts with guns territory.

If we look overseas we see a number of high casualty bombings in Europe and a ridiculous amount of bloodletting throughout the Middle East. You can talk about how

Ever hear of Timothy McVeigh? He killed quite a few. Now lets look at the numbers killed in South America by US sponsored terroist groups. Or Afghanistan during the russian invasion. Or in Ireland when US Irish were funding the IRA for amy years only stopping after 9/11. Or thieving Terrosit nation of Israel, using bombs paid for and supplied by the US.

If you are trying to equate any of those other governments' wrongdoings with one that tries to stone a woman to death for "adultery" because she befriended another man two years after her husband died you are as wacko as the Iranian theocrats.

this hypothetical "sister in a bikini", if she went topless, would probably be arrested here.
but other places in the world are not so horrified of the human body.
also, "sister in a bikini" probably wouldn't fair so well in certain areas of south side of chicago 35 miles from me, she'd be gang-raped and left for dead.

Are you joking? Have you ever walked around the outside of the White House? There are protesters camped out all over the place, all the time, none of whom are arrested, and many of whom have been there for months.

Of all the insanity on Slashdot, the thing that probably drives me the most crazy is the number of people who reply with "The USA is just as bad" when someone complains about human rights in a totalitarian nation. (And no, I'm not American.) Could the USA do a lot better in the human rights department? Absolutely. Are they orders-of-magnitude better than many, many, many places on this planet? Also absolutely.

I'll bite since I know Israel has misbehaved, the difference is that I don't think its anywhere near the level that has been levied against them. What public bus have they bombed? When has Israel publicly proclaimed any group of people as an inferior race? This is not the rhetoric I've heard both from the Israeli government and from Israeli citizens so I'm curious about these incidents as I'm sure they would be news to many. Also, what central authority poses as a theocracy for the country? The Prime Minist

1957: First intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 Semyorka1957: First satellite, Sputnik 11957: First animal to enter Earth orbit, the dog Laika on Sputnik 21959: First firing of a rocket in Earth orbit, first man-made object to escape Earth's orbit, Luna 11959: First data communications, or telemetry, to and from outer space, Luna 1.1959: First man-made object to pass near the Moon, first man-made object in Solar orbit, Luna 11959: First probe to impact the Moon, Luna 21959: First images of the moon's far side, Luna 31960: First animals to safely return from Earth orbit, the dogs Belka and Strelka on Sputnik 5.1960: First probe launched to Mars, Marsnik 11961: First probe launched to Venus, Venera 11961: First person in space (International definition) and in Earth orbit, Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1, Vostok programme1961: First person to spend over a day in space Gherman Titov, Vostok 2 (also first person to sleep in space).1962: First dual manned spaceflight, Vostok 3 and Vostok 41963: First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 61964: First multi-man crew (3), Voskhod 11965: First EVA, by Aleksei Leonov, Voskhod 21965: First probe to hit another planet (Venus), Venera 31966: First probe to make a soft landing on and transmit from the surface of the moon, Luna 91966: First probe in lunar orbit, Luna 101967: First unmanned rendezvous and docking, Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188. (Until 2006, this had remained the only major space achievement that the US had not duplicated.)1969: First docking between two manned craft in Earth orbit and exchange of crews, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5

Buran is not a clone of the US space shuttle. It looks similar, but it's not. Buran is launched on a huge booster; it has no main engines of its own, unlike the US Shuttle. It's more rugged than the Shuttle, which can't handle rain or cold weather. In many ways, it's a better design. T

Great blog article here [schneiderism.com] about Buran. What might have been. Just goes to show that it's good to see the Russians still active in space exploration and how their different approach gets results. They've been kicking ass since Day 1.

in order to iran, the islamic nation with an apparently insatiable appetite for science! I hope the pictures and data from the satellites are released publicly as well as perhaps their beacon frequencies? (to listen in on them as they traverse the skies, i know, im an amateur radio geek.)

the medical equipment is fascinating too...are they based on any current designs? do they take advantage of any FLOSS?

and being a tech nerd I cant wait to get specs on the new supercomputer too...are they soliciting any CPU time for college projects? what is its ultimate goal/architecture/performance metrics?

and if you're wondering when politics plays into all of this, it doesnt. I dont care what the russians are doing, what the mullas are barking, or what the israelis are doing because this is nerd news.

Oh, I thought politics played into this because the US is home to a bunch of barking fascists who want to vaporise anyone who is not christian or jewish... or who challenges the notion that the US is the best and can do whatever it fucking wants whenever it fucking wants. Obviously I was mistaken.

I can understand why having bought the bridge and tower you would want to offload them, but trying to get him on the Nigerian thing is just plain rude. You see, you're swallowing the propaganda has two major ill effects.

Firstly, it's bad for you personally because it narrows your mind and constrains it to predictable repeated pathways and as we all know, a brain that follows the same pathways again and again without exploring new possibilities starts to die and develops dementia.

Every time I read a story about technological advancement in some [non friendly to the US] nation it's always portrayed in the light of "Oh crap, dirty brown people are getting their hands on technology OMFG THEY'RE GONNA NUKE US"

What's up with that? What possible use could a stable, financially self-sufficient nation have for nuking a much larger nation (who has a lot more nukes)? I know people like to portray them as crazies and always extract the most radical-when-translated-and-taken-out-of-context q

Stable? At the last election, government forces killed some 36 people demonstrating against vote fraud.

That's not the mark of a stable government; that's a mark of a totalitarian regime that will kill to stay in power.

That's why it's bad when they get nukes.

I for one believe that trade is the best binder; sooner or later we won't be able to go to war against China because we simply won't have the industrial base to support ourselves (and I'm not talking weapons but shoes. How long would a US president last if the voters couldn't buy shoes? )

Let's bind Iran in a web of trade so they can't go to war with us. The problem is that we really don't have anything they want....

The US installed regimes (ousting democracies) that killed thousands when in power. Just because a regime is corrupt and brutal doesn't mean that the west does not consider it stable. It's up to you to decide the morality of that, but your point that the Iranian government killed 36 people pales into insignificance compared to the brutality the west's allies have meted out in the past (and most of the west itself for that matter).

The crazy thing here is it reads like you're about the good old US of A.

....messianic regime gets their hands on apocalyptic weaponry

Messianic regime... don't you idiots always go on about "god bless" and "in god we trust" and shit. Your constitution might say your church and state are separate, but how likely is it that an open atheist could get into the presidency? How many in your government believe Israel was given by god to the jews? Who had the first nukes? Who is the only country to have used nukes d

The US is the most barbaric nation in the history of the known universe.

Even if one totals deaths from US interventions, the amount of people the US has killed still trails behind the Soviet Union and far behind China under Mao. I am in no way defending American foreign policy, but the figures do not show the US to be the most barbaric regime in history.

I know people like to portray them as crazies and always extract the most radical-when-translated-and-taken-out-of-context quotes about how these countries/groups of people want nothing more than to wipe Israel and the US off the map, but I find it hard to believe that the leaders of such countries have any serious plans to this effect. I'm sure it drums up some good publicity in certain mainly arab nations, but every politician likes to talk big, few like to ask a country to pay for a dangerous and expensive war with a nearby nation.

Iran has been bankrolling Hezbollah for years and years now. I agree that starting a nuclear war isn't very likely, but the Iranian regime has gone beyond mere rhetoric into driving violence.

Did I say it was? The OP claimed that Iran has never gone from musing about violence to directly supporting violence. I corrected him. The shady foreign police acts of the US have nothing to do with it.

I don't think there's any worry that Iran will nuke the United States. That would just be completely stupid on their part.

The worry is that some of their nuclear technology might fall into the hands of some extremist group that would have no qualms about setting off a nuke in the middle of a city just to send a message. When someone blows themselves up using a regular bomb there's enough debris left over to have a good idea of who might have done it. Even a small nuclear device would cause enough destruc

I don't think there's any worry that Iran will nuke the United States. That would just be completely stupid on their part.

I fear Iran more than I ever did the Russians because I never believed the Russians were crazy or suicidal. I have no such assurance in the case of Iran or N Korea. We've had lots and lots of evidence pointing to the fact that Islamist extremists can be quite suicidal for the right cause. The Mutually Assured Destruction model of deterrence (which has actually worked quite well so far) doesn't really work when one of the parties is willing to entertain the notion of certain death in exchange for the assu

The Iranian government are not Islamic extremists any more than the US government are Christian extremists. You have more to fear from former soviet states because they have nuclear material dotted around the place with little security. If I wanted to make a dirty bomb I'd be looking around there. Iran is most certainly not crazy and has some very advanced science and technology.

Maybe I think we should nuke them first because Ahmadinejad (you know, the Iranian "President" - well if you don't count those pesky votes..) believes that it is his duty to trigger a period of chaos, war and bloodshed, which will lead to the coming of the 12th Imam who will eventually rule the world.

If you were truly informed on the Iranian situation you'd know that Ahmadinejad, though holding the title of president, is not the supreme ruler of Iran. He must answer to other people, and he does not have control over the military. While he's probably a nutjob, he can't singlehandedly plunge Iran into a war against the wishes of others.

None of what you say contradicts my point, that Ahmadinejad isn't really in charge. And as much as he likes to play the violent demagogue, many analysts find that Khamenei and his advisors keep cool and don't intend to bring the country into a nuclear holocaust.

"Hate" is good politics. No politician, in a democracy, or a dictatorship, or anything in between, ever kept his job by calling his population a bunch of lazy dumb-asses, who are responsible for their own dire status. Pin the blame on some folks out of the country, or a minority group in the country too small to defend themselves.

Embezzle, and stash the cash away in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Make sure to flee the country to your Villa on the Cote D'Azur before the shit hits the

Nice race-baiting straw man, there. People worrying about the Iranians and high-end weapons-related tech don't give a crap what color anybody is. It's the cultural world-view of the mysoginistic, retrograde theocratic thugocracy running the country, their vocal and overt support for terrorism, and their stated objective of wiping a country off the map. Who cares about skin pigment? It's what people do that matters. Like jailing and killing political opponents who don't want to be subject the Iranian leader

Every time I read a story about technological advancement in some [non friendly to the US] nation it's always portrayed in the light of "Oh crap, dirty brown people are getting their hands on technology OMFG THEY'RE GONNA NUKE US"

It's nearly as bad when it's a friendly nation. Hence the billion redundant unfunny jokes about curry/unintelligible tech support/Kwik E Mart/funny accents if it's a story about a technical development in India. Then there's always the standard "they shouldn't be doing that, they should be spending that money on social programs to get running water to their poor first" idiotic comments. Funny how nobody ever insists on NASA being wound up until poverty in the US is eliminated and the last homeless American

There are far more hateful, misinformed and bigoted comments than mine all over this thread. The ones you don't notice have an anti Iranian/pro American paranoia flavour. I just like playing devils advocate and balancing things up a bit..

So this is what the mighty have come down to. When faced with competitors who are rapidly catching up, Americans choose to pooh-pooh them as copycats and inferior derivatives, all the while dumbing down your own science education and breeding your own ultra nationalists and religious nut jobs. You, see, it doesn't matter how Iran, or China or India got their technology. The fact that they have them, and more importantly, continuing to develop them, is enough. So, go ahead and sit on your laurel. Better yet,

What other militant country with a nutjob leader which has openly swore to wipe another off a map was trying to advance "satellite putting up in orbity" technology and at the same time trying to start a nuclear program (but only to generate power) which is their god given right to do so...

Nothing to see here, move along.

I would say they are playing with fire, but that would be too obvious not to mention literal.